Best result boost for Hispania

13 June 2011

Colin Kolles: Today we achieved our best result in the history of Hispania Racing. It was a great race with a positive ending for the team. We made a step forward in terms of performance and in the championship position.

Hispania Racing boss Colin Kolles was delighted following the F1 2011 Canadian Grand Prix on Sunday after Vitantonio Liuzzi gave the little Spanish outfit its best result to date.

Liuzzi eventually brought his F111 home in 13th place at Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and was ahead of both the Virgin's of Jerome d'Ambrosio and Timo Glock and Team Lotus' Jarno Trulli.

Team-mate Narain Karthikeyan also finished ahead of those fellow 'new' team rivals in the sister HRT car - but he was demoted to 17th post-race when the stewards handed him a 20-second penalty for gaining an advantage when he went off the track at turns 13/14.

Speaking after the race, Kolles set an ambitious target, by saying the next step is to try and beat Team Lotus and secure tenth in the Constructors'.

“Today we achieved our best result in the history of Hispania Racing. It was a great race with a positive ending for the team,” he noted. “We made a step forward in terms of performance and in the championship position.

“The team is working very hard and it is a deserved result. The drivers did a very good job driving more aggressively after the track was drying up. We will have to improve further and target the 10th position in the championship.

“I am very thankful and happy for all the team members who are working very hard to move the team forward. I want to also thank the suppliers supporting us.”

Liuzzi meanwhile was also encouraged, especially as all the updates provided a much needed boost in performance.

“It was a crazy race. The crazier it is the more we like it though,” he added. “It was a great result for us, for everybody in the team, because we've done everything right since Saturday, when we had a great result in qualifying. In these kinds of situations you always have to gamble, you have to be in the right place at the right time, we made the right decisions and the team worked perfectly during pit stops. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but this is a great starting point for the future.

“The updates helped but in these sorts of conditions it's more about timing and getting the right tyres in the right moments. The pit stops have been good, everything went well. But we're positive because all the updates worked and now we have to keep pushing to get more for the following races.

“It's a great feeling to overtake other cars, we're always focused on challenging our nearest rivals, but this race was crazy because we were able to overtake much faster cars. All you needed to do was be smooth and under control, it's always a great feeling when you're racing properly.

“We achieved our best result of the season, which is great for the team. We hope this won't be our best finish of the season; we hope to finish even better in the future and will push for this.”

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Existing on the equivalent of Ferrari's sandwich budget, taking loads of flak from everyone from Bernie Ecclestone down and still being there is a result.
Say nothing, make no claims and keep your heads down and you will find any result much sweeter!!
Well done Hispania, keep turning up and chipping away at it and who knows where it may take you. Remember, people taking the p##s out of Minardi. Thats now Toro Rosso!!

I agree it won’t be long before HRT are beating Team Lotus every race, they have two drivers that are more than capable, especially with Trulli and Kovalainen settled into a routine of finishing 18/19 and being congratulated for it by Fernandes. Trulli after 2 years still cant get on with the car. Lotus after the much promised updates for Barcelona seemed to have bottomed out. Lotus are falling into the pattern of previous Gascoyne lead teams most $$$ spent least points achieved. This is the season where Gascoyne promised points at the expense of Sauber, Force India, Williams and Torra Rosso and HRT and Virgin beat them. Answer less $$$ Less Gascoyne Less Kovalainen Less Trulli = winning ways & points